Melchbourne House

Summary

Melchbourne up to 1817

At the time of the Domesday Book, the manor of Melchbourne was held by the Bishop of Coutances. By the twelfth century it had passed to Alice de Clermont who gave it to the Knights Templars. They established a Preceptory at Melchbourne on a site near The Cottage.

The Victoria County History quotes John Leland's comment that Melchbourne House was built by Sir William Weston, last prior of the Templars, successors to the Knights Hospitallers. Be that as it may, the present house is thought to have started as a Jacobean house, and encased in the Georgian period.

Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the manor was purchased by the Duke of Bedford in 1549. The Russells held it till 1604 when it was sold to Oliver St.John, the centre of whose estate was at nearby Bletsoe Castle. As a cousin of the Tudors through Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, royalty was received at Bletsoe Castle on at least seven occasions between 1605 and 1624. This was just at the time Melchbourne was supposed to have been built. It was probably built as an overflow house when royal visitors visited the area. It would mean that both king and queen could be entertained without one of them having to stay with what the St.Johns thought of as their inferior neighbours. They no doubt chose the site for the house at the centre of the park. James I would no doubt have loved it, as his great enthusiasm was for falconry and hunting. Much of the surviving correspondence of Oliver St.John with the King relates to hunting.

The house was substantial, having 33 hearths in 1671 as compared with 38 at Bletsoe. Alternatively, the St.Johns may have found Bletsoe Castle uncomfortable. It would appear that about this time the family abandoned Bletsoe Castle in favour of the newly-built Melchbourne.

The only view of the house prior to its eighteenth century transformation is a thumb-nail sketch of the house on William Gordon's map of Bedfordshire of 1736? Unlike the present house it seems to have been two storeys high with windows on the second floor only in the gables. The facade was dominated by an entrance porch/tower with a recessed bay of two windows on each side with two sets of gables outside them.